When news first broke of the terrorist attack last Saturday in Paris, the French government rushed out a statement describing the suspect in custody as a French citizen born in France. His name was given as Armand R.
More details gradually emerged and the picture painted of the man accused of stabbing to death a German tourist was what every western government dreads – that of a man who bit the hand that fed him. It is a story not too dissimilar to that of Salman Abedi, who detonated a bomb at the Manchester Arena in 2017, killing himself and 22 others. Abedi was born in Manchester to Libyan parents who had fled their homeland for a new life in the West.
In the case of Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, his parents had left Iran for a more liberal life in France. Naturalised in 2002, Rajabpour-Miyandoab’s name was changed a short while later from Imam to Armand as a sign, presumably, of his family’s wish to assimilate into their adopted country.
Armand’s parents were not religious and in his early years nor was their son. Then at 18, while a student, he discovered religion. He converted to Islam and rapidly became radicalised, reportedly corresponding online with some of France’s most notorious Islamists.
The other information rapidly relayed by the authorities was the alleged mental illness of Rajabpour-Miyandoab. The French Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, cited errors by his doctors as a factor in his murderous rampage.
A surprising number of Islamists have, reportedly, suffered psychological problems in recent years. This is a new terrorist phenomenon because it wasn’t the case during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Murderous and fanatical, yes, but Protestant or Catholic terrorists were not mentally unstable.
In a 2016 paper entitled ‘Terrorism: it’s not mental illness’, the eminent Northern Irish psychiatrist, Dr Philip McGarry, OBE, reported that of the terrorist murders committed during the Troubles, ‘the contribution of mental illness to the 3,000 killings was, in essence, totally negligible.’ He cited the work of two doctors in 1986 who, having examined more than 100 murders in Northern Ireland between 1974 and 1984, concluded that ‘political murderers were found to be generally more stable than non-political murderers’.
In 2016 the Royal College of Psychiatrists published a paper that questioned some of the tenets of the British government’s Prevent Counter-Terrorism strategy, set up the previous year, specifically pertaining to mental health.
‘“Radicalisation” is not a mental illness,’ stated the College. ‘It is, rather, understood as a dynamic process of change in the mindset and behaviour of an individual that leads to an alteration in worldview, perception of external events and his or her understanding of them.’
The emphasis among some western governments on the mental health of Islamists is the latest manifestation of the cult of denial. It began with the mantra, ‘Islam is a religion of peace’, trotted out faithfully by western leaders such as Barack Obama, Francois Hollande and David Cameron during the 2010s. Soon, governments formulated a new response to every fresh Islamist attack: the perpetrator’s mental state.
In 2016 the Nice atrocity, which killed 86, and the attack in Munich that left nine dead, were attributed to terrorists with mental health issues. So was a knife attack on a rabbi and two other Jews in Marseille in 2015, and the brutal murder of a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in Paris 2017 by a man screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’; neither assailant had a history of mental illness. But the court ruled on their psychological state and the man who murdered Halimi was deemed unfit to stand on trial, to the outrage of Jewish groups.
The failed asylum seeker, Emad al-Swealmeen, who accidentally blew himself up en route to bomb the Liverpool Women’s hospital in 2021, had, according to the Guardian, suffered mental health issues. That was the view of the police as well.
Had al-Swealmeen survived the blast, his state of mind might have formed part of his defence, as it did Ahmed Hassan, the Iraqi refugee who told a court he attempted to blow up a London tube train in 2017 with a 2.2 kg bomb containing nails, screws and five kitchen knives because he was ‘very depressed’. Similarly, Khairi Saadallah, a Libyan, claimed that mental health issues were the reason he stabbed three gay men to death in a Reading park in 2020. Juries rejected both arguments and in sentencing Saadallah to life imprisonment Mr Justice Sweeney said the accused had been ‘seeking to advance a political, religious or ideological cause’.
Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab is also clearly a fanatic, and a cunning one who, according to reports, told authorities on his release from prison that he was ‘de-radicalised’. He had been detained on terrorism charges in 2016, a year before I wrote an article in these pages entitled ‘The West is delusional about deradicalizing jihadists’. I quoted the then head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, who admitted his greatest fear about Jihadists slipping back into Europe after fighting for Islamic State in Syria was the influence they might exert on radicalising younger Muslims who never made the trip.
That appears to be what happened to Rajabpour-Miyandoab, who was allegedly radicalised in prison by hardened extremists. One source claims he told authorities that during his imprisonment ‘he had heard voices’.
One voice that Rajabpour-Miyandoab heard, though not in his head, was that of Adel Kermiche, like him an extremist who was imprisoned for his ideology. The two men corresponded at some point. Kermiche was released from prisonin March 2016 after persuading a judge he was de-radicalised. Four months later he and another Islamist murdered an elderly priest as he conducted mass in his Normandy church.
Perhaps Rajabpour-Miyandoab really does suffer from mental health problems. Or maybe he’s another devious extremist who has exploited the gullibility of the French authorities.
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